


What Really Happened to Ivanova's Mom?

by pallasite



Series: Behind the Gloves (condensed) [4]
Category: Babylon 5, Babylon 5 & Related Fandoms
Genre: Angst, Backstory, Bigotry & Prejudice, Canon Compliant, Canon Jewish Characters, Canon Russian Characters, Childhood Trauma, Episode: s01e01 Midnight on the Firing Line, Episode: s01e03 Soul Hunter, Episode: s01e16 Eyes, Episode: s01e17 Legacies, Episode: s02e05 The Long Dark, Episode: s02e19 Divided Loyalties, Episode: s03e14 Ship of Tears, Episode: s04e16 The Exercise of Vital Powers, Episode: s04e17 The Face of the Enemy, Essays, Fix-It, Gen, Guilt, Hospitals, Illness, Latent Telepaths, POV Child, Parental Death, Psi Corps, Sad, Sad Ending, Secrets, Self-Fear, Self-Hatred, Sleepers, Suicide, Unreliable Narrator, Worldbuilding, blame, scapegoating, telepaths
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-03
Updated: 2020-04-03
Packaged: 2021-03-01 04:47:31
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 5,535
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23459593
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pallasite/pseuds/pallasite
Summary: Did the Corps really kill Sophie Ivanova? Does the Corps really make "sleepers"? Is there something that Ivanova's father never told her?In this post, I've placed all the relevant essays together, so my readers can have citations, and so those who wish to share this with others have a go-to link.This work is a selection from theBehind the Glovesproject.
Relationships: Andrei Ivanov & Sophie Ivanova, Family Relationships, Susan Ivanova & Andrei Ivanov, Susan Ivanova & Sophie Ivanova
Series: Behind the Gloves (condensed) [4]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1687384





	1. Sophie Ivanova's Backstory

The purpose of the following essay is to place all the relevant information in the same place, so 1) my readers can see where I'm getting everything (and why), and 2) readers who would like to link to a site that explains all this have a go-to link.

  * Canon is internally inconsistent with basic facts such as dates and ages, so let's clear that part up first.



There are two versions of the story as given in canon.

**The first, as given in _Midnight on the Firing Line_ , _Eyes_ , _Legacies_ and _Divided Loyalties_ is as follows:**

Sophie Ivanova had been a telepath since her youth, but was not known to the Corps. They discovered her on her 35th birthday, by which point she was married with two children. Susan, the younger, was old enough to have made telepathic contact with her mother (Susan is a latent telepath), and to remember this. Sophie chose to go on sleeper drugs. Susan was old enough to remember her mother before sleepers. She remembered a man in a grey suit coming to their home once a week to give her mom the injections, and she remembered her mother's decline. This went on for ten years, after which her mother took her own life.

This puts Ivanova's age at the time of her mother's death at about sixteen. This is also consistent with the order of events as given in _Soul Hunter_ \- Sophie died, Ganya died in the Earth-Minbari War, and then Susan enlisted in EarthForce against the wishes over her father. She says in _Sic Transit Vir_ that she enlisted in 2247. And the age of enlistment (as given in _Eyes_ ) is seventeen, so her mother died when she was about sixteen.

**The second, as given only in one episode, _The Long Dark_ , is as follows:**

Susan Ivanova was ten when her mother committed suicide. She was playing with her dolls when her mother sent her to visit her cousin Magda. Her father was at work. When Susan got home, her father was there, along with some other people, and he said that her mother had gone away. Later she found out what had happened.

If her mother had been on the drugs for ten years, however, then Susan would never have been able to remember her mother before the drugs, let alone make telepathic contact with her, something she talks about in several episodes.

It's not possible for Susan to be both ten and sixteen at the same time, and it's not likely she's playing with dolls at sixteen.

Since there are four episodes that support one version of events and only one that supports the other, _Behind the Gloves_ goes with the first version. **Susan was sixteen. Her father was at work, her brother was off fighting in the war, and her mother sent her out to her cousin's house - but she wasn't ten, and she wasn't playing with dolls.** The short time in between the loss of Sophie, the loss of Ganya, and Susan leaving to go off to the military (over her father's wishes) was super difficult for her father, which I get into later.

  * What's this about "beating the tests?"



Another problem with the "Susan was ten" version is that only 5% of telepaths, including those born to two telepath parents, develop telepathy before puberty - so there would be few tests in school her mother would have supposedly "taught her to beat" before she died. She was just too young.

Again, we're going with the version where Susan is older. While I can't say her mother didn't try to teach her "beat the tests" in some way, Susan, as she admits in _Divided Loyalties_ , is not even a P1.

"She taught me how to fool the tests given at school, always staying one step ahead of the Psi Corps. I'm probably not even a P1. I've never been able to read anyone except my mother. I can pick up on feelings sometimes. I can block a casual scan and I know instantly if someone's doing it. But nothing more."

As she says in that same scene, "I'm a [latent telepath](https://archiveofourown.org/works/23608996/chapters/56655397)." But what she says next is **not true** : "But that's enough for the Psi Corps to come pull you in."

She doesn't even have a rating, let alone meet the cut-off for the Corps. [Lyta's mom](https://archiveofourown.org/works/10804515) was a P2 - born in the Corps to a very important mother in a Psi Corps "old family," Natasha Alexander - and even though both her parents were telepaths, and she'd been raised in the Corps since birth, she was never allowed to be in the Corps because her rating was too low.

(Sorry Susan Ivanova, you're just not that important to them. You didn't "beat the tests" - there was nothing there to find.)

Perhaps her mother taught her what she believed was a way to beat the tests in case one day, Susan did develop stronger telepathy. But it's not even likely that her mother had "beaten the tests" - Susan describes her mother in _Midnight on the Firing Line_ with, "She wasn't trained, couldn't use it well." Which means not well enough to "beat the tests," if such a thing is even possible. There's only one example given in canon of someone who did beat the tests - [Kevin Vacit](https://archiveofourown.org/works/12056229), Bester's grandfather, who is above P12. (But more later on what might have happened with Ivanova's mom, and how she wasn't found.)

  * So Susan says something vague about "always staying one step ahead of the Psi Corps" - what's that mean? Was she always "on the move" to avoid detection?



While it's possible that Sophie and her family moved frequently before she (Sophie) was discovered, from that point on, it's not likely. Remember, a man came to their house once a week to give her injections.

For ten years.

The Corps knew where the family was.

And they also knew that Sophie had two children.

No, Susan's existence was no secret to the Corps.

In _Ship of Tears_ , Bester tells her:

"You know, when I first came to Babylon 5, I studied your record. Terrible pity about your mother. But she took her own life. It wasn't the Corps that did it."

 **That "record" he's talking about? That's the record Psi Corps opened on her when she was six. When her mother was registered, they made files for her two children as well, in case those children should turn out to be telepaths.** Neither child was strong enough to get a rating, so the files are pretty empty - but he was able to find out about her mom by locating her name in their database and seeing she was Sophie Ivanova's daughter.

Susan wasn't "hiding from them." They just didn't care about her, because she's not even a P1, and they have better things to do with their time and money. All along, they had a (mostly empty) file on her, and all along, there was no consequence to her career. [Even after she tried to kill a telepath on Io.](https://archiveofourown.org/works/10507632)

And the existence of this file didn't stop her brother from serving in EarthForce, either.

B5Vault (supposedly a 100% canon source, though there are plenty of errors throughout) even goes so far as to say, "After Sofie [sic] was identified by the Corps circa 2236, she ensured that Susan kept on the move, ahead of the T-tests [sic], by educating her abroad. She studied at Lycée Voltaire in Paris in her teens."

**Psssst: They have the Psi Corps in Paris.**

I can't say she didn't study there - but I can say that this couldn't have been related to keeping the Corps from "knowing about her."

Note also the date: 2236. Ivanova enlists at 17 in 2247. She was born in 2230. **She was six when her mother went on sleepers, and sixteen when her mother died. Not ten.**

  * So how did her mom avoid detection?



Canon never tells us, but here's a plausible back story. Perhaps she was born and raised in some remote part of Russia where they didn't test very often. That happens in small, remote villages. Susan grows up in St. Petersburg, but if her mother had also grown up there, she would have been tested. So maybe she grew up in a small town in a remote place.

She was also a fairly weak telepath - probably not even a P5. (Yes, she was untrained, but if she "couldn't use it well," she was probably also on the weak end.) Once she was past school age, when there would be no more tests, she moved to the city, and stayed away from jobs where they would test (most jobs don't). She didn't go to university. And so no one except her family ever knew - till one day, for some reason, she ended up in the presence of another telepath, who noticed what she was - and having no idea why she was passing as a normal (harmless unregistered telepath? criminal rogue?) he or she reported her to the Corps. The end.

As for why Ivanova says her mother had to take sleepers in order to stay with her family - that piece is unexplained. It's not Corps regulations - marriages in the Corps have to be approved (a point I address in much more depth later in _Behind the Gloves_ ), but they cannot undo a marriage that is already legal. They could send her away for training, but this would be short-term, and if the family lives in St. Petersburg, the Corps would have an office in the city.

I address a possible solution later.


	2. Who Really Makes Sleepers? And Why?

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> What the show didn’t tell you: To blame the Corps for sleepers and their effects, as Ivanova does, is canonically so _out of touch with reality_ that since the beginning, even rogue telepath Underground leaders, _the most extreme of the extreme_ , do not blame the Corps for this - and correctly only blame normals.

Now, we move on to "sleepers."

As I said on Tumblr:

 **What the show didn’t tell you** : To blame the Corps for sleepers and their effects, as Ivanova does, is canonically **_so out of touch with reality_** that since the beginning, even rogue telepath Underground leaders, **_the most extreme of the extreme_** , do not blame the Corps for this - and correctly only blame normals.

To back up:

Starting in the early 22nd century, Earth began to create a [caste system](https://archiveofourown.org/works/10292036): people, and telepaths. By the mid-22nd century, these policies had become universal across all Earth-controlled territory (on Earth or off-world). And these laws had not been changed at all by the time of the show, a hundred and fifty years after this began.

Who made these laws? Normals. All normals.

I covered much of the relevant early in the project in [Josephine's Story](https://archiveofourown.org/works/10293074/chapters/22772363). It is well-documented in canon (quoted and cited in that story) how this system of legally segregating, disenfranchising and dehumanizing telepaths began.

  * All the laws were made by normals, and any chance that telepaths could rise up and challenge them was squashed by laws, regulations and eventually a charter barring telepaths from holding office, from becoming lawyers, or from exercising free political speech (among many other restrictions).
  * The laws requiring telepaths to register and join the Corps (and before that, the MRA), take sleeper drugs or go to prison were first introduced by Sen. Crawford and his associates [as far back as 2117](https://archiveofourown.org/works/10324169/chapters/22823876).



"But what about those who don't want to join?" DiPeso asked.

"Well, naturally there will be some who want to continue with their normal lives. I'm happy to announce that Halotech has developed a new drug that shows great promise in inhibiting psionic abilities. It's still in the testing stage, but it looks good and, once approved, will be offered as an option for telepaths who want to preserve a normal lifestyle."

  * The Psi Corps charter of 2156 created a "universal MRA" - converted the MRA into an independently chartered regulatory agency, and effectively mandated that as a condition of telepaths being spared genocide and extermination, they would be forced to enforce these laws on each other, [by force if necessary](https://archiveofourown.org/works/10292036).



Final Reckoning, p. 243:

Bester, at his trial: "This undeclared, unrecognized war has been fought for a hundred and fifty-seven years. Its casualties - have always been on _my_ side. And when this killing began, what did EarthGov do about it? They built a telepath ghetto called Teeptown, and they gave us badges to mark us, separate us. They gave any normal who wanted to kill a telepath the means to find us and identify us. Then they used telepaths to control telepaths. Why? The implicit threat was always there - ask any telepath old enough to remember. _Either you control yourselves, or we will control you._

"That was the choice I grew up with. Hunt down and sometimes kill my own kind, with the blessings of EarthGov and every normal citizen who voted for it, or be subjected to the same uncontrolled genocide that was visited on us in the beginning."

  * The drug Halotech invented was highly toxic.



See Dark Genesis, p. 58-59. A low-level telepath named Mercy decides to take early-version sleeper drugs in order to keep her job as a secretary, but the drugs make her very ill. (“Mercy came back the next day [after the injection] like a dead woman. When Blood tried to touch her mind, she had to run for the toilet, and there she vomited for half an hour. Mercy curled on the couch, her normally lively eyes blank. She watched the vid with only sluggish interest. Tentatively, Blood scanned her again. She was reminded of Novocain, and also of heroin. It was as if Mercy only remembered being alive. She locked Mercy in her room the next day, called her boss, and told him that the injection had made her sick.”)

Mercy is very low-level - in later generations, someone of her strength never would have been in the Corps or been offered sleeper drugs, but this is very early, and everyone who tested positively was treated the same way back then.

  * More than seventy years later, by around 2188, sleeper drugs were still manufactured by normals, and were still highly toxic.



See Dark Genesis, p. 229: Circa 2188, a pharmaceutical company owned by Holden Walters, and apparently based in Seattle but with several facilities elsewhere, is producing sleepers “by the ton.” The Dexters (Bester's biological parents) and their associates bomb one of the plants, with the intention of [poisoning the city of Seattle](https://archiveofourown.org/works/10835274) with the drugs released in the explosion.

On p. 229, Fiona Dexter (Bester's biological mom) refers to telepaths on sleepers as “zombies.” (“No one who had met one of the zombies the antitelepathy drug eventually produced could really imagine it was a legitimate option. Yet it was manufactured by the ton, wasn’t it? Normals watched their neighbors take the injection twice a week, without blinking.”)

Pretty much the only thing that both rogue telepath criminals and the the Corps agree on is that _sleeper drugs are fucking horrible_ \- they're designed by normals and manufactured by normals to poison, to abuse, and to control.

The Corps never uses such drugs even on the most dangerous telepath criminals: to subdue them, to transport them, during incarceration - _never_. These drugs are only ever used in canon _by normals_ to incapacitate, disable, abuse, control and even kill telepaths (such as Ivanova's mother).

  * Over time, the formula of the drugs was tinkered with so that telepaths could live on the drugs longer, and thus make the normal-owned and operated drug companies more profit. A single dose no longer made someone violently ill (such as happened to Mercy), and some people even could live on the drugs for many years with no "side effects" (which may or may not actually be intentional).
  * As of 2256, one of the major producers of sleeper drugs for EarthGov was William Edgars.



Deadly Relations, p. 196-197: “A little more interesting was a profile of William Edgars, an up-and-coming billionaire in the pharmaceutical industry. Edgars was one of the contractors who produced sleepers, so anything concerning him was of interest. The article was typical Fortune 500 stuff, though - hobbies, carefully chosen political views, photos with the dog. When asked about business teeps, he seemed to avoid the question, an interesting thing in and of itself.”

Edgars’ hatred and fear of telepaths, and his plot to kill and/or enslave all telepaths (as many as TEN MILLION PEOPLE) through a (Shadowtech) engineered virus, is detailed in _The Exercise of Vital Powers_ and _The Face of the Enemy._

His extermination plot is foiled not because the mundane police on Mars did do or could do anything to stop it (if they even cared), but because Bester, and his team of crack commando bloodhounds, personally stopped it.

**To blame the Corps for sleeper drugs, and the effects of them, is legally, historically, factually and morally wrong.**

Yet Ivanova blames the Corps for it anyway (and all telepaths in the Corps by proxy, as I will discuss more later), because the show doesn't want you to know the facts above (all canon!). They omit these facts entirely. No telepath ever presents the truth to Ivanova when she goes on like this - not Talia (as I aimed to correct in my "honest rewrite" of _Legacies_ [here](https://archiveofourown.org/works/23455735/chapters/56227087)), and not Bester in later episodes. We only get this:

"You know," he says in _Ship of Tears_ , "when I first came to Babylon 5, I studied your record. Terrible pity about your mother. But she took her own life. It wasn't the Corps that did it."

He never says why, of course, and this crucial piece is intentionally cropped out as to give viewers the false impression that he's lying, and it really was the Corps all along, that he's deflecting the Corps' culpability by blaming the victim, or at least that there is something "reasonable" and "justified" in Ivanova's hatred of the Corps and all telepaths in the Corps by proxy.

A hatred so vicious she [attempts to kill a telepath on Io](https://archiveofourown.org/works/10507632), [threatens Harriman Gray's life](https://archiveofourown.org/works/10587027) (and then leaves the room at the end, with the other mundane command staff, while he's lying unconscious on the floor, having been assaulted by Ben Zion). A hatred that runs so deep she finds ways indirectly to blame Talia for her mother's death, even though Talia had nothing to do with it, and projects "victimhood" onto Talia because she was raised in the Corps ("What happened back then is not your fault. But it's part of what you are. And yet you're as much of a victim as my mother." _Midnight on the Firing Line_ )

A hatred that runs so deep, she tries to fire up the defense grid and **shoot Bester's ship out of the sky** ( _Dust to Dust_ ) - not because of anything he's ever done to her (he hasn't! even if they blame him personally for everything) - he's actually going to the station to save everyone's asses, _again_ , this time from a drug dealer whose activities, if not stopped, endanger thousands if not millions of human and alien lives - but because she fears he's some kind of threat to them all ("what if he scans us and finds out what we've been up to???"), and because she hates "what he represents" (to her). Behind his back, in the same episode, she joyfully talks about her wish to kill him. And though Sheridan overrides the actual order to murder him, no one ever disagrees with Ivanova here or elsewhere about how "right" or "justified" this homicidal hatred and bigotry is. Nor does she face any consequences for said attempted murder(s).

Over Ivanova's wishes (and intentions), they don't outright murder Bester, but guess what they do instead?

_Force him to take sleeper drugs!_

And then they threaten Bester's life again in a similar way when he comes back to the station in _Ship of Tears:_

Bester, still in his ship, far from the station: "If I came unannounced, your people would shoot me down before I got within two kilometers of Babylon 5 [like you tried to do last time!]."

"Mr. Bester, we no longer have any ties to Earth or to the Psi Corps. So we don't have to put up with you or your games. Now, I am sitting on four brand-new unidirectional pulse cannons. Give me one good reason why I shouldn't blow you out of the sky."

Aren't mundanes sweet?

Now, if all the proffered reasons for Ivanova's hatred are problematic at best, why does she feel this way? It's not "normal" and "natural" to be so bigoted (against telepaths or anyone else) - people have to be taught that level of hate.

And it can't just be because she lost her mom - do you think she ever says even a single bad word against the Minbari, who actually did kill her brother, as part of the three-year war of extermination they waged against all of humanity - _a decree made by Delenn herself?_ If she wants to punish anyone for deaths in her immediate family, she should try to kill Delenn, who literally gave the order that all humans everywhere, no matter where they live, should be murdered in revenge for the Omega Incident. Delenn personally has the blood of many, many thousands of humans on her hands (tens of thousands in the Battle of the Line alone) - including Ivanova's brother.

Nah. Just telepaths. Because telepaths. She can't harbor any ill-will toward the Minbari - that was all a _misunderstanding_ , you see! (Even though they were actually the single greatest threat to all of humanity until the Shadows woke up.)

I offer some possible (in-universe) explanations for Ivanova's hatred in the next installment (other than author bias, oh the author bias), along with some possible reasons why her mother felt she had to take the sleeper drugs in order to stay with her family.

I do know that Ivanova's memory is selective:

"Well, she'd been on the sleepers for so many years. Psi Corps control freaks wouldn't leave her alone. It's the same refrain over and over again. 'Sleepers or prison. Sleepers or prison.'"

No, they were trying to get her to join the Corps. Because unlike the mundane scum who make the drugs, and who make a hefty profit out of poisoning and abusing telepaths, _they didn't want to see her poisoned, disabled, and eventually dead._

Somehow, this remains lost on her, facts be damned.


	3. Is There More to Sophie Ivanova's Story?

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Maybe there's a few things Ivanova's father never told her.

"Let me tell you a story. It's about a woman who fell in love, got married, had children. One problem: She's a telepath. She kept it from Psi Corps till she's 35. By then, she had two kids. The Corps told her to come with them or go to prison. But she loved her family and she refused to leave them. There was only one way they would let her stay. Every week, for 10 years, they injected her with drugs to suppress her telepathy. Every day she died a little, until she finally ended it by taking her own life." - Susan Ivanova, _Legacies_

"You know, when I first came to Babylon 5, I studied your record. Terrible pity about your mother. But she took her own life. It wasn't the Corps that did it." - Bester, _Ship of Tears_

I've now [cleaned up the timeline of events](https://archiveofourown.org/works/23459593/chapters/56237338) leading to the death of Ivanova's mom, explained more about [what it means to be a latent telepath](https://archiveofourown.org/works/23608996/chapters/56655397) (more [here](https://archiveofourown.org/works/23608996/chapters/56693767)), and I've compiled literally [everything canon tells us about sleepers](https://archiveofourown.org/works/23459593/chapters/56237512). But what we still lack is an explanation for Ivanova's singular and passionate hatred for the Corps. And we also lack an explanation for her belief that her mother had to take sleeper drugs in order to stay with her family, when there is no law or regulation cited or shown anywhere in canon to support that belief.

So a different sort of explanation is needed.

In _Soul Hunter_ , Ivanova has the following conversation with her father via comm channel, as he lies dying in the hospital:

"He's come out of the coma, but his condition's much worse. You only have a few minutes, at best."

"l understand. Father?"

"Is that you, Susan?"

"Yes."

"Dear God, I never thought that I'd see your face again. It makes this easier. Susan... I know I haven't been the best of fathers to you. But when your mother... passed on and your brother was killed in the war... I was too wrapped up in my own grief to pay attention to your needs. And when you joined EarthForce against my wishes-"

"You don't have to say this."

"Yes, I must. There's no more time. I want you to know... how proud I am of you, Susan. I always have been. But a father should give his daughter love... as well as respect, and in that, I failed you. I'm sorry. I'm ashamed. Forgive me."

"Thank you."

"Dushenka moya."

"'Little soul.' You haven't called me that since l was... Papa?"

We know that Sophie died in 2246 (when Susan was 16), that Ganya was killed in action soon after, and that Susan enlisted in EarthForce soon after that (in 2247, when she turned 17, which is the age of enlistment). It's not hard to see how, after losing his wife to suicide and his son in combat, Andrei Ivanov would be opposed to his daughter enlisting - yes, after the war, but she would putting her own life on the line now, too, and leaving home for space, leaving him all alone back on Earth. (And it seems she didn't make much time for him in the years in between her leaving home and the show, either.)

He also knows he "hasn't been the best of fathers" to her. I am going to speculate there's more here than we're seeing on screen. I think he has more to apologize for than not being there for her, and for being too wrapped up in his grief to pay attention to her needs when her mother and brother died.

I think what feels sorry for goes back much farther than that. I think he feels guilty for contributing to - if not causing - the problem, even if he still can't entirely admit it.

Imagine this. Ivanova's mother grew up in a remote, rural place (or places), so she was never discovered in tests in school, and she encountered no other telepaths who might notice her and potentially call the Corps. Only one in a thousand in the general population has a rating - and that number is for the _whole population_ , so it includes both telepath communities (that tend to be insular, and concentrated in major cities), as well as towns where there are no (or extremely few) telepaths. If she was never tested (and it seems she wasn't), it's possible she's _never even met another telepath in her life, ever_.

God knows what the people in her community taught her about the Corps.

And she was on the weak end ([probably under P5](https://archiveofourown.org/works/10978596)), and untrained.

Then she moves to the city and marries Andrei Ivanov, and he's on-board with keeping her secret - he just doesn't want his family mixed up in any of "that kind of stuff." Again, God knows what he believes about the Corps, but let's say it's _really bad_. Let's also assume, not unreasonably, that there's _a lot_ of stigma against telepaths in their community.

When Susan is six and Ganya is about eight, the Corps finds out about Sophie. Susan and Ganya are both too young to understand what's going on, so what they know about what happened at that point comes solely from what their parents told them later.

I'm going to assume that the Corps did their job properly, and explained the laws to the parents. I'm also going to assume they did their job properly and explained the risks posed by the drugs, at least insofar as they are legally allowed to.

Sophie, frightened, considers joining the Corps.

Andrei is also frightened. He doesn't believe the Corps when they explain the risks of the drugs - he thinks this is some ploy to get her to join them. He's paranoid of the government interfering in the life of his family, keeping them on some lists, restricting their activities, and monitoring them. Remember, they're not only Russians, they're Russian Jews.

And he also knows there is tremendous stigma against telepaths. (Both he and Sophie harbor such attitudes themselves.)

Andrei tells Sophie that he will not live openly married to a telepath, and he will not let his children grow up with a mother in the Corps. He tells her that if she joins the Corps, he will take the children and leave her, and she will never see them again. Sophie relents. She agrees to his plan.

They hope that Sophie going on sleepers will allow the family to maintain the appearance (and lie) that their family is "normal," and thus keep the stigma from the children.

_Tell no one._

Susan and Ganya are told that Sophie must take the drugs, or go to prison. They are not even told there was another option - that she could have stayed with her family, healthy. The children are told that this is being done to their family by those "bad telepaths," who come to the house in gray suits, who wear black gloves and psi insignia badges. It's all their fault.

As a little tiny kid, Susan knows she can sometimes feel her mom's emotions, and can sometimes feel her mom's mind - and she knows that at least once, she made contact with her on her own. But she's six, so she understands very little, and all she learns from this is terrible fear that what happened to her mom will happen to her, that the scary men in gray suits and black gloves will come for her, too. And every week, when they come, she runs and hides.

_Tell no one - or some day, they'll come for you, too._

Most kids hate shots as it is. That's bad enough, but she also sees her mom get sick (and can't talk to any of her friends about why), and she watches her mother decline, and all along she's getting filled with more and more fear (for herself), rage and hate. She had a mom, and these bad people took her away, something she can never, never forgive, for as long as she lives.

And then to everyone's shock, Sophie commits suicide, likely from a combination of the depression brought on by the drugs, and the stigma brought on from being a telepath in that society.

Susan blames the Corps, because that's who she's always blamed. Andrei blames the Corps because he can't face his own guilt in contributing to her death.

He never believed that what the Corps reps had said could be true, that the drugs really could lead to this. He'd thought they were lying, because they were in the Corps. Or even if they were telling the truth, that the Corps must somehow be responsible anyway - they must have made the drugs that way as some sort of punishment for those who won't join the Corps, like going to prison. They did it. Somehow. BECAUSE IT HAD TO BE THEIR FAULT.

Everyone hates telepaths, right? Well, here's another reason: if you don't join their cult, they kill or imprison you.

Then Ganya is killed in the war, and Susan wants to enlist, and Andrei is furious, because she's the only family he has left, but she is hot-headed and leaves home and enlists anyway. And that opens the rift between Susan and her father.

It's only at the very end of his life that Andrei looks back and see how he failed as a father. He knows that had he not insisted Sophie take the drugs, had he not given her an ultimatum and threatened to take the children away, she would still be alive, and healthy. He knows he and Sophie lied to the children and let them believe the Corps would come and take Sophie away if she didn't take the drugs.

But he doesn't think he'll get a chance to see Susan again, because she's far out in space and not actually talking to him other than in occasional short messages with pleasantries and small talk. Their relationship is cold and strained. When he falls ill, she doesn't come back to Earth to see him. She's too self-absorbed, angry at him, and in denial about the severity of his illness to deal with it.

Thus he is shocked when he comes out of his coma - briefly - and she's on the comm channel. He tries to tell her he's sorry for how he failed her, and that he's proud of her, but he only has a minute or two before he lapses back into a coma, and never comes out.

He never tells her his own role in her mother's death. She's left trying to deal with her own complex feelings about the strained relationship she had with her father, and not knowing how to mourn him, but her murderous hatred for telepaths is never dimmed.

She can rationalize her brother's death - he died honorably in battle, defending humanity. She can forgive the aliens that tried to wipe out the human race, even though they killed him. But she can never forgive the Corps, for what (she believes) they did to her mother.


End file.
